New post on solitarywatch.com: In the Story of Jonah, an Urgent Lesson About the Dangers of Solitary Confinement

New post on solitarywatch.com

In the Story of Jonah, an Urgent Lesson About the Dangers of Solitary Confinement

Guest Post by Margo Schlanger

The following piece originally appeared in September 2013 in Tablet, and is republished here by permission of the author. Margo Schlanger is a professor of law at the University of Michigan and the former Department of Homeland Security Officer for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. She helped to draft the American Bar Association’s Criminal Justice Standards on the Treatment of Prisoners.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Drawing of a solitary confinement cell at California’s Corcoran State Prison by Billy Sell, who died during last year’s prison hunger strike.

Preparing this year for Yom Kippur, I began to study the Book of Jonah, traditionally read on the afternoon of the holiday, for insight into our country’s current use of solitary confinement. After all, Jonah is perhaps the most famous solitary prisoner of all time. And at first blush it might seem that his (short) stay in solitary—inside a whale—was pretty good for him. It turns out, though, that even Jonah didn’t find redemption in solitary confinement.

The story of Jonah is ancient, but it addresses a topic with real contemporary urgency. At last count, 80,000 American prisoners were locked in solitary confinement. In California this summer, long-term solitary provoked a hunger strike of tens of thousands of prisoners; it ended a week ago, with dozens of prisoners having refused to eat for two entire months, after the California legislature promised hearings. Strikers sought more humane and less isolating conditions—better food, access to sunlight, more individualized decision-making about their continued stay in Special Housing Units. Does Jonah have anything to say about the best response to those demands?

Jonah’s first chapter tells us about God’s call to the prophet Jonah to go to Nineveh—an enormous, distant, and non-Jewish city—and inform the Ninevites of the errors of their ways. But Jonah does not do what prophets do. He does not answer God in words; he does not inveigh or argue. He simply disobeys, running away as fast and far as he can. He hires a ship to Tarshish, at the other end of the Mediterranean. On the ship, too, Jonah declines the prophetic role of speaking to God. As all the sailors cry out to their gods to save them from the deadly storm that threatens, he sleeps. Even when the lots are cast and it is apparent that he is the source of the storm, he explains to his shipmates what is going on but does not deign to pray, or even talk, to God. He has them throw him into the water, and when he is in the water, drowning, again he fails to seek salvation, intercession, explanation.

But then things change, the text tells us: “God appointed a great fish to swallow Jonah; and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. Then Jonah prayed to the Lord, his God, from the belly of the fish.” So we learn from the Book of Jonah the possibility, the aspiration, that stress and discomfort, hopelessness and fear can lead to some kind of redemption. Jonah uses his three days alone with his conscience to good effect. He ends them with obedience in two ways: First, he re-embraces his relationship with God, by calling out in prayer to him. And second, he goes to Nineveh, as commanded.

This episode and text shed light on the modern prison practice of solitary confinement—isolating prisoners alone in a cell the size of a parking space for 23 hours a day, with an hour, still alone, in an “exercise yard” (a shed-sized, ceiling-less room of concrete, open to the sky and elements but often with no ability to see out, except above). Prisoners and their keepers call this kind of confinement “seg” (for segregation) or “the box” or the SHU (Special Housing Unit). The original impetus for seg housing, used by the Quakers in the nation’s first prison, in Philadelphia, was to provide time and occasion for thought and repentance—the very way that the whale’s belly worked for Jonah. Modern prison segregation, however, has a different theory. It’s premised more on ideas about contagion and control; fear that the “worst of the worst” prisoners will harm others if not isolated, and that the just punishment for noncompliance within prison is to make conditions harsher, sentencing offending inmates to a prison within a prison.

So, how does this work, in practice? We learn from countless witnesses, voices from inside solitary confinement, that Jonah’s hope, and his deliverance to a life of purpose, are atypical responses to isolation. How do most people react to isolation, to the modern belly of the whale? Here’s one account, from Cesar Francisco Villa, a California prisoner who has been in solitary confinement for 11 years. What he writes is worth quoting at some length:

Nothing can really prepare you for entering the SHU. It’s a world unto itself where cold, quiet, and emptiness come together seeping into your bones, then eventually the mind.

The first week I told myself: It isn’t that bad, I could do this. The second week, I stood outside in my underwear shivering as I was pelted with hail and rain. By the third week, I found myself squatting in a corner of the yard, filing fingernails down over coarse concrete walls. My sense of human decency dissipating with each day. … My sense of normalcy began to wane after just 3 years of confinement. Now I was asking myself, can I do this? Not sure about anything anymore. Though I didn’t realize it at the time—looking back now—the unraveling must’ve begun then. My psyche had changed—I would never be the same. The ability to hold a single good thought left me, as easily as if it was a simple shift of wind sifting over tired, battered bones.

There’s a definite split in personality when good turns to evil. The darkness that looms above is thick, heavy, and suffocating. A snap so sharp, the echo is deafening. A sound so loud you expect to find blood leaking from your ears at the bleakest moment.

The waking is the most traumatic. From the moment your bare feet graze the rugged stone floor, your face begins to sag, knuckles tighten—flashing pale in the pitch of early morning. The slightest slip in a quiet dawn can set a SHU personality into a tailspin: If the sink water is not warm enough, the toilet flushes too loud, the drop of a soap dish, a cup. … In an instant you bare teeth, shake with rage. Your heart hammers against ribs, lodges in your throat. You are capable of killing anything at this moment. Flash attack; a beating, any violent outburst that will release rage.

This would be the time it’s best to hold rigid. Take a deep breath. Try to convince yourself there’s an ounce of good left in you. This is not a portrait you wish anyone to see. And then a gull screeches passing outside—another tailspin and you’re checking your ears for blood.

Archives

Categories

Follow me on Twitter

Fighting for justice means fighting for justice
for all of us and not playing around with the
colour of skin.
Focus on justice. i am a scientist for educ./psychoanalysis/art - and frankly speaking a savant -
discovered that I can do more with blogs & social networks
for humans in shadow, children in shadow, animals in need et al -
I have some more blogs, please, visit them
p.e.: www.childreninprison.wordpress.com
www.schweingehabt.wordpress.com
colouredjustice.wordpress.com
Curi56blog
et al.
I am glad to meet YOU here:
Annamaria
thank you
Annamaria